The Odyssey eBook

“‘So far so good,’ said she, when
I had ended my story, ’and now pay attention
to what I am about to tell you—­heaven itself,
indeed, will recall it to your recollection. First
you will come to the Sirens who enchant all who come
near them. If any one unwarily draws in too close
and hears the singing of the Sirens, his wife and
children will never welcome him home again, for they
sit in a green field and warble him to death with the
sweetness of their song. There is a great heap
of dead men’s bones lying all around, with the
flesh still rotting off them. Therefore pass
these Sirens by, and stop your men’s ears with
wax that none of them may hear; but if you like you
can listen yourself, for you may get the men to bind
you as you stand upright on a cross piece half way
up the mast, {99} and they must lash the rope’s
ends to the mast itself, that you may have the pleasure
of listening. If you beg and pray the men to
unloose you, then they must bind you faster.

“’When your crew have taken you past these
Sirens, I cannot give you coherent directions {100}
as to which of two courses you are to take; I will
lay the two alternatives before you, and you must
consider them for yourself. On the one hand there
are some overhanging rocks against which the deep
blue waves of Amphitrite beat with terrific fury;
the blessed gods call these rocks the Wanderers.
Here not even a bird may pass, no, not even the timid
doves that bring ambrosia to Father Jove, but the
sheer rock always carries off one of them, and Father
Jove has to send another to make up their number;
no ship that ever yet came to these rocks has got
away again, but the waves and whirlwinds of fire are
freighted with wreckage and with the bodies of dead
men. The only vessel that ever sailed and got
through, was the famous Argo on her way from the house
of Aetes, and she too would have gone against these
great rocks, only that Juno piloted her past them
for the love she bore to Jason.

“’Of these two rocks the one reaches heaven
and its peak is lost in a dark cloud. This never
leaves it, so that the top is never clear not even
in summer and early autumn. No man though he had
twenty hands and twenty feet could get a foothold on
it and climb it, for it runs sheer up, as smooth as
though it had been polished. In the middle of
it there is a large cavern, looking West and turned
towards Erebus; you must take your ship this way,
but the cave is so high up that not even the stoutest
archer could send an arrow into it. Inside it
Scylla sits and yelps with a voice that you might
take to be that of a young hound, but in truth she
is a dreadful monster and no one—­not even
a god—­could face her without being terror-struck.
She has twelve mis-shapen feet, and six necks of the
most prodigious length; and at the end of each neck
she has a frightful head with three rows of teeth
in each, all set very close together, so that they
would crunch any one to death in a moment, and she
sits deep within her shady cell thrusting out her heads
and peering all round the rock, fishing for dolphins
or dogfish or any larger monster that she can catch,
of the thousands with which Amphitrite teems.
No ship ever yet got past her without losing some
men, for she shoots out all her heads at once, and
carries off a man in each mouth.